Vladimir Zhirinovsky

Vladimir Volfovich Zhirinovsky (25 April 1946-) was leader of the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia from 19 April 1991. He was a fierce nationalist who blended nationalist and populist rhetoric and attacked the West, and he was seen by the West as a fascist.

Biography
Vladimir Volfovich Zhirinovsky was born in Alma Ata, Kazakh SSR, Soviet Union in 1946, the son of a Polish Ashkenazi Jewish father and a Russian mother. His parents split while he was an infant, and his father abandoned the family and moved to Israel in 1949. In 1964, he moved from Almaty to Moscow, and he served in the Soviet Army during the 1970s. In 1989, he became director of a Jewish cultural organization, and, in April 1991, he founded the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia as the first officially sanctioned opposition party. In June 1991, he came in third in the Russian presidential election, and he became a perennial presidential candidate with the support of the nationalist far-right of the country. Zhirinovsky initially denied his Jewish ancestry, but he later decided to underplay it and emphasize his Russian identity. He supported the restoration of the Russian Empire through irridentist wars and monarchism, and he held strongly anti-Western views; he was decried as a fascist by the West.